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my words i have this one question. this is the united states of america. we are the land of the free and even with our challenges we are the best country in the world.

we want to be like hungry for russia or mother strongman totalitarian state any given day why wouldn't we look, i get it. we aren't perfect. people are so desperate to see their homes. literally kill to be held accountable to the same because they are. [applause] look, it's because they are talking about crazy things.

we should not. [inaudible] [inaudible] [laughter] >> there ago. [laughter] [applause] where was i? [laughter] these folks keep wondering the elections talking about crazy

things maybe they should terminate the constitution or put leadership held accountable laws and standards. [applause] those should not be debate in the united states america but in the gop they are. they will not win a general election, first voters around the country. [applause] that's why the theme of this year's summit, liberal tradition is so important.

many of our fellow americans to make america the envy of the world. we've spent so long being told we should make america great again and make america great again and tune out the noise. every american knows the answer to that question, they know what it is. it is tradition, the formula of individual beach, constitutional rights, accountable government, free enterprise. usual respect, common decency, equal opportunity instead of equal outcome. mutual unyielding commitment to prove facts and taking responsibility for yourself while extending a hand to your neighbor.

this is what defines us, not ethnicity or religion or who we elect, it's our principles that define who we are as a country and who we want to be. i believe when america was those principles into practice, we do big things. really big things. just look at our history, our principles of democracy and constitutional government inspired us to win our independence. principles of equality under the law let us two slavery, segregation and then fight for civil rights. our principles of freedom a strong dose tierney and communist. free enterprise allies led to unseen increases in the standard of living and our embrace of

science and objective reason help us put a man on the moon and computers in our pocket. it's because of that greatness and goodness of america as we are but i think everyone in this room today and connects us not just to each other but those who came before and will follow after us. it requires we make an important choice in this year, not between republican and democrat serving our liberal tradition and rejecting so we listen to these panels today, tomorrow, i urge you critically about that choice and from each of us in the coming years to save these principles we love.

it's not going to be easy, it's going to be tough. it will require sacrifice, sweat and durable. thank you. [applause] it is my honor to welcome to the stage our first set of panelists, the panel is america's tradition liberalism. mr. bill crystal who i'm sure you all know.

liberalism and well-known in the american enterprise institute from the washington examiner. >> thank you and congratulations. they have a conference every year. [laughter] congratulations on proving what went wrong there and it's great, you seem to be recovered from last night, the wild happy hour. the parking animal of this movement.

the wild after parties for what happens at the conference, state of the conference. anyway, it's great to see you all. for eight minutes or so, ask a couple questions make comments and make way for the excellent panelists. >> thank you and a pleasure to be here. this is my first principles first conference. i thought i might start with the title of our panel : tradition of classical liberalism it is a

novel title because a few years ago the phrase classical liberal was not general circulation. current conservative and maybe deep into the weeds and progressive as opposed to regular liberal democrats. a. where we have to rethink labels and argue in a way that we haven't had to do for many decades prior to the last ten years or so. the change in the american rights, it was assumed for the history of american rights after world war ii they put freedom as

the primary political value. they believe in a little freedom, economic freedom, freedom overseas and the idea of ideals should inform american policy. over the last ten years or so, freedom has not been the primary value of the american rights. talk to republican house members and activists, they will stay american freedom but there is another value held first especially among the maga republican wing party and i spent a lot of time trying to figure what that value is. i don't think have really identified it. early on stop at it where the

value of the maga movement was protection. protection from overseas entanglement, protection from immigrants coming to the united states, protection from trade competition overseas but that seems very defensive and sometimes an offense of plan and among will we call the republican party on the house side, it is simply negation. we don't like it, we don't want it, who want to tear it down so the situation where values are

undefined are unclear. you get a panel on what it means to be classical liberal in america today. you get tucker carlson interviewing dictators but also welcoming platforms, people associated and still are associated with the far left. but as i historian, there are residents for that moment. on the one hand, great uncertainty and danger to

understand the reason why it is important and reflect, it rests upon strong social like family communities that need revived if we revive the spirit of freedom. [applause] >> thank you very much, it's a pleasure to address this audience.

made america unique in that was the liberal tradition that led america to be different from other liberal democracies. the tradition of john the great english nearest but the right to lie in the declaration of independence gains with thomas hobbes insistence the fear of violent death is the greatest

government to protect that. politics and really wait ways. you take something like rule following, americans don't like to follow rules. the reliant on their own individual initiative.

in those things in nature. market economy that's been the strongest and continues to be the strongest in the world but it also has a downside they do like to obey laws and things with a higher crime rate and democracies it away the same kind of leaves to apple computer and innovation that leads to a certain degree of social disorder.

i think that was the interview trump gave several years ago and i believe an interviewer said and we are killers to, you think we are so brave. unfortunately american exceptionalism which is little us 15 years ago, every republican would have said turn on its head and there are many people in the maga right saying they are exceptionally bad they are spreading values all over the world and not by model to everybody and thus the reason for international engagement.

certainly got me putin is a defender of christian values in a person who believes in strong government. i will remind everybody international dimension of american exceptionalism would be right from the beginning. you look at the bill, you see this masonic temple with the all seeing eye, many of our founding fathers beginning with george washington were freemasons and inscription noble, new order of the agent. americans believe their system of government exceptional liberal character would be liberals around the world.

other countries in the world, i think has been to america's self conception all the way back to the founding fathers. it took rate power to translate that into other policy and their understanding by what makes america exceptional is important. one of the reasons i regard myself as a classical liberal just consider the alternatives. we have a number of conservative intellectuals have said liberal

tradition, what did they go back to? patrick want to rewind the clock before the 17th century were everybody had this view they all agree on. the liberal conservatives perhaps, he really does want that alternative to liberal order. and they would fight over that liberal tradition. [applause] >> also terrific. look at the maga right now and

the woke left and iran and i think you get a sense that if you are trying to protect or defend or advance classical liberalism, is sort of makes me feel like cs lewis in narnia make the chief who cs lewis wrote the charges and last stand. i don't think this is a last stand but this is a situation, going from cs lewis two -- [laughter]

the songs dreams we would not speak of what you have and what you lost. what you had and what was lost so here is a story of what we had. of yourself, you are 11 years old maybe and it 1975 and your somebody who loves reading poetic literature and sports teams with your back against the wall and there has begun a year end a half long buildup to a celebration bicentennial to the united states and its april 19, 1975 and people are talking

about this and it catches your imagination. there is poetry, the midnight paul revere and the bridge, the flag to a breeze unfurled. it catches your imagination. not long later, there is this buildup and you read almost exactly a year before the declaration george washington shows up in his military dress blues and that signal tells people we're going to send him in charge of this militia

against the greatest army in the world and he's willing to give that up to fight for it. you start to wonder, what is it that makes dedicated, what is inspiring him to get into classes in the fall, sixth grade for the whole country was in the bicentennial at the time. we are coming back from horrible decade, and oil embargo, assassination yet the country is coming together so you start studying this, sixth grade level but your consent of the governed and your brothers are conservative around the house

and you pick up and read the incomparable journalist writing after week how great ronald reagan is and you listen to reagan and there is the palpable level country and get you inspired and the buildup comes in the buildup continues to go and the whole country comes together. sure enough he gets to bicentennial and this glorious celebration and by this time, you're 12 years old and the fireworks go off and you turn to your father and you say that, i want to live until i am 112 years old. that's what we have now yet -- that's we had now you see polls where still minorities but very

large minorities of the american public, it is exceptional. page attempt is one of the highest items and certainly doesn't identify with the liberal tradition. and about ten years ago and visitors to one of the best colleges in the country meeting with the leaders not just the cream of the crop, the sweetest cream of the crop and one of the older people and that was the

declaration. and moved to over topics and something else comes along. you would think expense within 15 minutes of mentioning the declaration and it hit me. number one the declaration of itself had no resonance with him, no meaning to them. this isn't recent. in any context of sacred honors,

poetic and speaks of adventure. it's filled with people such as churchill and komar fighting be strong, saith my heart. i've seen worse than this. made a promise, always remember the surrender. not this bunch. this wasn't even part of their frame of reference. that was a decade ago. the situation has only gotten worse. a full generation and probably more has been educated in ways every imagination, but values feeling of safety about freedom but look at history as a way to enable and not remotely appreciate the miracle of the

american subject. of course if the story of america doesn't speak through a huge subset of an entire generation then it will be even less likely to grapple with and embrace the rich philosophical amount madison and others that together form intellectual tradition for classical liberalism. that leaves us where, we? even as our institutions are writing, we may be stuck with a choice for president between two brain fog old, one sold out to the crazy left and one who is a raging menace of violence but

here is a big sand not be left standing. what was lost candy we found and sometimes blood, sweat and tears does when the day and that's why we're having this conference and now we have the rest of history. draw some battle plans. [applause] >> decades in washington this panel has each speaker has stayed within the time limit.

it is a type limit. rule abiding here. they were all they were not fatalistic, they were sober examinations of the situation and how we got there. he your couple comments and then answer a particular question if you want. and there are a ton of these conferences and things like

this. the theme is freedom. the freedom is to get the guy and traditions and the importance of family and religion and appear libertarian by any means. >> you work on this with the people in europe and latin america and elsewhere. a little bit more on the implications abroad of the

collapse or at least the pausing of the american commitment. ...

he speaks for his point of view they didn't have the appeal that donald trump ended up having to actually lead a movement, and mass movement of followers. so when we think about what with the contingencies and the individual choices that led us here, i would you say two things. there were several events in

obama's second term that created the foundations to the trump movement. and their continuing today. one was the supreme court decision on same sex marriage, pushed the religion right, large part into the religious right into an oppositional attitude for america and american government. a lot of the work that it been done for decades to make the religious right belief and american principles and believe in the sympathy between religiosity and american political ideals collapsed and that was one. there were two. when the crisis began. the children start showing up on southern border in 2014. and then three, you had the rise of the black lives matter movement. out of the ferguson crisis, out of the trayvon martin shooting. all these three events began pushing the republican party

toward a position of openness towards donald trump. and then you have the question of agency, to my parts. first is trump agency. he's always pushing and he doesn't care and he doesn't believe in responsibility for himself. but then you also have the agency of the republicans who allowed him to take over their party. and each step along the way there were choices made not to push back, not to resist. so as much as we look at these larger forces pushing the country in the direction that it's headed, we also need to recognize both that events matter and choices matter and we saw the opportunity to make choices for ourselves. >> thanks, matt. take for five minutes and then glenn. [applause] >> yeah, a couple of comments. one of the features of american exceptionalism is compared to other modern liberal democracie

democracies, the american founding fathers created a very complex constitutional system with many more checks and balances because of that distrust of concentrated state power. so if you compare the u.s. system let's say to the classic british westminster system in britain, 50 plus one votes in parliament can abolish any law in the country including freedom of speech or they can really get what they want. in america we got a very powerful upper house. we've got federalism that delegates many post the states and localities. we have a bill of rights. we've got a constitutional that can overturn ordinary legislation. and i think this is one of those institutions that is a two-edged sword. i think all of us are actually quite glad we have these checks and balances when you meet a demagogic leader like donald trump in a first term it really

did keep them under control, especially the judiciary. but it also means that it puts obstacles in front of good leaders and it's very hard to do things. we have too many rules, too much permitting, too much regulation in the path the things we want to do positively. that's one of the things that fueling this desire to kind of written down a lot of those fundamental checks and balances. one of the big issues that we're going to face, if there's a second trump term, is how many of those are actually really durable and, quite frankly, it was the action and individual agency of a lot of people like brad raffensperger that kept those institutions operating in the last election, and they may not in the future. second point i would make is that one of the deep traditions that is associated with classical liberalism is what's referred to as the republican

tradition, not republican in the partisan sense but in the sense of ancient republics that were based on law but also deeply imbued with a belief that public virtue is necessary for the survival of any republican form of government, the sort you saw on classical athens and sparta or rome and the like. i think that one of the most damning things that i've heard about donald trump was what his former chief of staff john kelly revealed about the trip that they took to normandy where they were looking at all the graves of those americans that died defending europe in the second world war, and trump's response was i don't understand what motivated the suckers to go here, you know. and he said this to a general whose own son had been killed in

afghanistan. and it reflects a mentality of a personality that is totally devoid of any concept of public service, and any idea that we have a liberal republic that is not simply each one of us pursuing our own material self-interest, but that we have a stake in the hole. we have a stake in defending that liberal republic. and if you don't exercise public virtue, you're not can be able to keep that republic. and i think that's one of the big issues that is at stake. and then finally agree with everything bill said about ukraine and russia. it is a really big test for us because i've never seen an international conflict with greater moral clarity than this one in terms of who is right and who's wrong. and, unfortunately, we seem to be turning away from being able

to make that judgment properly. >> thanks. [applause] >> you have about four minutes to leave it on a hopeful note. >> actually that's exactly what i want to do because first of all, i do want to associate myself on the second anniversary of the invasion of ukraine with saying we have to somehow convince congress to congressional leaders to let a vote happen to a ukraine. we've got to go speed we believe this to keep our over four-year commitment to congressional coverage. you can finish watching it on her c-span now out. we take you live now to the senate floor where lawmakers are taking votes on judicial and executive nominees. live coverage on c-span2.